Castlemartin peninsula seabirds etc and Atlas update

At Stackpole a hobby noted mid week, it appeared at dusk - when some of our 500-1000 pipistrelle, 500+ greater horseshoe and c. 200 lesser horseshoe bats were starting to emerge!

Whole colony seabird counts more or less completed on the Castlemartin peninsula and study plot counts at two main colonies at Stackpole and Elegug Stacks have at least one more visit to do. Still to add up all the sub-colonies figures but at present they suggest that Auk numbers are pretty similar to last year, if a wee bit late breeding. Around 15,000 guillemots on the peninsula, 1,000 razorbills, several puffins in three separate locations between Stackpole Head and Mewsford Point.

At Stackpole Quay, we have also recorded black guillemot - not yet sure if it will stick around or appear in the cliffs where we had one resident in summer many years ago.

Gull numbers pretty well the same as last year. Unlike St Margaret's/Caldey, kittiwakes down to around 25 pairs nesting. Though curiously, around 200+ adults and imms have been feeding off Elegug Stacks over the last week or so and there are plenty of close inshore sand eels around!

Occupied Fulmar sites are at their lowest ever here. I have yet to see any eggs and many sub-colonies are vacated - though birds are flying around the cliffs.

Atlas changes:
Some of you may have noticed the down-grading in species richness maps in the Breeding Atlas since yesterday. Sorry about this! Annie and I plus others (via the Regional Atlas forum) are partly responsible for suggesting these changes were made. See the message from Simon Gillings BTO Atlas Development Officer below.

"As suggested by various people I have now recalculated the species richness maps so that they exclude species that were coded as M, U or F. Also, all species with no breeding evidence at all are also excluded. So the map now only shows species richness of those that are possibly, probably and confirmed to breed. This is how it should have been all along, so apologies for misleading. As you'll see, the result is rather marked to say the least.

Most areas now show up in whites and yellows rather than oranges and reds. But it is a better indicator of where effort needs to focus next".